The Tulsa Roughnecks (1978–1984) were a North American Soccer League (NASL) team from Tulsa, Oklahoma. It played its home games at Skelly Stadium on the campus of the University of Tulsa. The team, previously Team Hawaii, moved to Tulsa after the 1977 season.[3] Former player and coach then General Manager of the 1983 Tulsa Roughnecks Alex Skotarek united one of the lowest budget teams and salary payouts to all franchises in NASL resulting in a NASL championship in 1983 Soccer Bowl in Vancouver BC with a 2-0 Tulsa defeating Toronto.

Shortly after the Tulsa Roughnecks victory of the 1983 Soccer Bowl President Ronald Reagan sent congratulatory remarks to the team as they carried the trophy in a celebration parade through downtown Tulsa marking the Roughnecks as the first and only professional franchise to win a sports championship title in the state of Oklahoma.

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The Roughnecks first match was a 6–5 indoor loss on February 11, 1978 at the Bayfront Center versus the Tampa Bay Rowdies. Three nights later in their home debut, the same two teams faced off in front of the first 3,250 Roughnecks fans at the Tulsa Assembly Center.[4][5] A few weeks later they would capture the Skelly Indoor Invitational which they hosted.[6] Over the years Tulsa regularly appeared in the NASL playoffs. They won the NASL title in Soccer Bowl '83, defeating the Toronto Blizzard at BC Place Stadium (Vancouver) by a score of 2–0 before a paid attendance of 60,051.[7] The teams all-time win-loss record was 104–106. The Roughnecks' home games consistently drew better-than-league-average attendance with the annual record occurring during the 1980 season when the team averaged 19,787 spectators over 16 games for a total attendance that year of 316,593 (placing the Roughnecks at No. 5 between the Seattle Sounders and the Washington Diplomats). The largest home game attendance for Tulsa occurred on April 26, 1980 when 30,822 fans watched the Roughnecks' 2–1 victory over the New York Cosmos at Skelly Stadium. The highest attendance for any Roughneck game occurred on August 26, 1979 when Tulsa met the Cosmos in New York for a NASL playoff game before a crowd of 76,031.[7]

Although the NASL's final season was 1984, and the league folded in early 1985, the Roughnecks continued to operate as an independent club. They had put together an ambitious schedule of more than 20 matches stretching from May into August, against teams from the USL, MISL, WACS, Europe, and South America, as well as other former NASL sides that had not folded.[8] Excluding several cancelations along the way, the team compiled a record of 8–2–1, before suspending operations on July 17, 1985.[9]